Pages

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Nerd Games: The Free Flowers (Year 2)

Given that it's now almost February, the chances of me having a Valentine reside statistically in the "Not Probable" range. I believe I've given or sent flowers for at least 7 or 8 years running now, and it seems a shame to let the streak end.

Given that, and my motto that every girl deserves flowers on Valentine's, I've decided to open up the free flowers competition again. The rules are the same as last year.

1. Nominate someone to get flowers. Write a reason/explanation, or don't. I don't care. A good reason helps your chances though.

2. I'll pick a winner and pay for and send flowers. I'll also write a very crappy poem which you can help with if you'd like.

3. Contest ends on the 9th.

*I reserve the right to half ass it like I did last year if I get a slight case of death again.

Here are some sample entries that I just made up to get you started:

I think you should send flowers to my wife, because her husband is a jerk.

A dozen roses to Ruthie that read:Dear Ruthie,Please move back to 11-L so that Jesse has something to write about.Love, Sesquipedalis Readers

Send flowers to Leyda with a card that reads, "Happy Valentine's - James Franco"

1. Last summer, we moved our family to Ohio from Boston thinking that I would be done with my degree in October. Ha! I'm moving to the new house this weekend...4 months later than our plan.

2. Last weekend the pipes in our "new" house froze. i was unable to troubleshoot the water problems from 847 miles away on the phone.

3. She was underwhelmed with my choice of Christmas gifting this year. She said she wanted to learn to play a banjo. I bought a banjo for her. She refused to open it. [The flowers would already be open...no need to worry that they wouldn't be opened.]

4. She had a really crappy birthday, too. She was sick and I was 847 miles away. And, she didn't get flowers then, either.

5. She got to deal with our kid's first broken bone. She called on her way to the school to pick him up. I wasn't much help for that phone call either.

So, there are 5 reasons why she sould be your winner. then, at least one of us can make her happy for the day.

I have to veto Kristan's proposal, on the grounds that her name is misspelled. The only time it's acceptable for a girl to have a purposely misspelled name is when she's working the pole. At all other times* it should be shunned in every possible way.

I'm vetoing Dave's nomination out of tough love. He desperately needs to send her flowers (or hell, a whole damn garden) on his own, and not via proxy.

Mars gets a veto due to her failure to regularly update her blog. Only geeks 60% projects, and geeks don't get flowers sent to them.

Now, on the opposite end of the spectrum, I'd like to second Ben's brilliant proposal. A quick perusal of www.prisonpenpals.com and www.prison-penpals.com yielded what I do believe may be our Free Flowers winner:

She's a cute, lonely girl with a broken heart, looking for someone intelligent, financially secure, and with a sense of humor, and she's holding a 4.0 GPA while working towards a computer-related degree. She's local here in Perryville, and is single without any kids. However, to be fair, on the negative side she's fairly tall at 5'9", a smoker, and will be released in only a year and a half; it would certainly be understandable if the 18 months between Valentine's Day and her rejoining society isn't enough of a safety cushion for you. It'd barely be enough time for the ink in her neck from the "Jesse" prison tat to dry.

However, these negatives aside, I see a potential match made in incarceration heaven here! Or, at the very least, potential amusement for future blog posts. Ratings have dipped for the blog; it's time to introduce a new character: our new muse.

I anxiously await tales of Jesse's first conjugal visit! (Or at least of his first restraining order against someone...)

* The exception to "all other times" is when the girl is hot, namely an 8/10 or higher. As I have not met nor even seen a picture of the aforementioned offender, I'm simply going by the statistically-safe route of assuming that she's the rule and falls into the 80% grouping, and not an exception of the 20% variety.

I think you should give flowers to Heidi and maybe put a little apology on the card from me. I think that perhaps I wasn't as grateful as I should be for all the hard work she did for my birthday. If you could make it up to her for me, I'd really appreciate it.

JR:She's getting the WHOLE garden. As soon as enough snow melts, the landscaper is coming over and planning out the flora and fauna motif.

I hope you realize what you've just done to that sweet young thing in prison. After reading here, all of Jesse's loyal readers will be clicking away on her and the click counter on her page is going to start spinning like an odometer being set back by a "we finance anyone" used car dealer. She'll be very sad when she gets only one boquet [assuming Jesse shows poor judgment and picks her over my wife...]-dave13

First of all, J.R. drives a hard bargain. Kimberly Ledwin is a vision in prison; however, because of this, you MAY have to compete for her attention. I'm sure, during this holiday seasons, that may subscribers to the prison blogs will be thinking of her since she has already proclaimed her loneliness to her internet viewers...which seem to be pouring in if you refer to the bottom portion of her excerpt.

With that being said, I second Liang's nomination for many reasons:

1) I am Flip Cup; therefore, I know Flip Cup will enjoy them.

2) The bouquet Liang picked out is, by far, the most beautiful bouquet I have EVER seen.

3) I think it would be quite enjoyable to order those and write a "crappy poem" on them...which, in turn, would not only brighten MY day, but brighten the day of the employees who have to send out endless bouquets to undeserving recipients during this holiday, while they probably do not receive the same gestures.

4) I could probably take the flower out when they die and turn the vase into a Flip Cup Championship Trophy for Amy and Sean's St. Patrick's Day Celebration. Then, it would become the gift that keeps giving since I will be receiving that as my prize for winning this competition as well. It's science, a proven fact.

5) I just got a new job with my very own office. Currently, I have a Mac that I don't really know how to work and a phone with a great number of voicemails that I am still unsure of how to check. I think this bouquet would go quite nicely on my empty desk in front of my bare walls. I would also enjoy seeing the faces of the rest of my co-workers when they witnessed all that is the beer mug flower vase.

6) I spent last Valentines Day with you and I feel like it's only fitting to do the same this year.

First and foremost, if I don't have the address of your recipient, I'm going to need it. The intention is for it to be a surprise. When you go to the mailbox on the 14th and nothing is there, you'll know you lost. I've got almost everyone on here's, so it shouldn't be too big of a deal. Use the link on the right to email me if you want. No need to post it publicly.

I want to thank everyone who's entered so far. My friends crack me up, and this is probably the most that I've ever laughed at my own blog.

So, now a few comments on the individual posts:

Ben, It looks like J.R. already did your work for you, but it might be a good idea to poke around for an inmate more my "type". Unfortunately I think my type is a bit more socially responsible, so you have your work cut out for you.

Stan, I actually had to think for a moment to figure out what #6 was. I was surprised to find it was actually my joke. Damn I'm funny. Well played on the obscure reference.

D-Lite, You go to MIT. I think a more appropriate gift would be for you and the other nerds there to invent a teleporter so you can hang with the Mrs. on a more regular basis. I gotta think there are at least 3 dudes at MIT actively researching this. And if there aren't, don't tell me. Let me dream.

Marstastic, If I were to award you a prize based off of your blog entries, I'm not sure it'd be flowers. You certainly deserve something, I'm just not sure it's of the floral variety.

J to the R, No comment. You're a baller. I should give you a receipt for this post, because you just owned it.

Hollylicious, You got chocolates from me once, and I'm somewhat afraid that your boyfriend would kick my ass. Solid list, but #4 #5 and #10 don't count. #4 because I'm never on anyone's side. #5 because I hate you for it. #10 because mine is better.

Ro Ro, Solid entry. You really do owe Heidi. If she does win, is it okay if I send them to Anthony and Heidi?

Liangry, Short, sweet, to the point. A+. I wish I could get you to be so concise in our work meetings.

M-Money, Also well played. For those who don't know, Mike's fiance Stacy likes to get drunk and plan parties. They're normally the most elaborate parties ever designed, and then are never thrown.

G, the hot-dogs are my thing. I believe I made the same ambrosia joke here

FC, I'm glad to see you came to play too. You bring some solid arguments. I haven't decided if the fact that you got "The Big Bear" last year helps or hurts your chances.

For my blog commenting peers who have since followed my previous diatribe, in no particular order:

Dave: As Red taught us, prison life consists of routine and more routine. I'm sure Kimberly was nothing short of thrilled to see her page counter register the hits of all 8 loyal readers of this blog. Jesse's flowers will simply be the proverbial icing on the crowbar-filled cake.

Rose dearest, I'm afraid you've gone and gotten yourself married... meaning you're one of them now. Since reader votes on this blog are weighted, yours is now inconsequential at best, unfortunately. Your vote has essentially become the IMDB equivalent of the person voting a 10 for the "It's Pat" movie.

Liang-a-tang: That beer bouquet is truly an excellent find. However, your recipient nomination is flawed, as we'll get to shortly...

Mike: While encouraging our liege to partake in harassment is an admirable tactic, I'm afraid your fiancee wouldn't make for long-lasting blog amusement.

Geremy: You're mistaken, good sir. Hot dogs are excellent, and mac and cheese is excellent. Combining multiple sources of excellence simply results in even more excellence. See: beer brats, cookie dough ice cream, and the turducken.

Holly, oh Holly - you almost had me there. If you had strategized just a little more, you would have had an entirely cogent, worthy appeal. Beginning with the positives, you have a totally cute name, and not something boring like Mary, Sarah, Rachel, Jane, etc. You also touted your pony tail-able long hair, "really cute" black pants, being short, having cooking skills, and your admirable ability to sell Jesse on something trendy (MySpace) -- you sold yourself GREAT with these points. BUT...

... you had to go and wreck yourself by sharing how you're an unemployed, depressed bum that isn't interesting enough to be worthy of a single blog post, and has temporarily quit smoking. (Temporarily, since your depression will inevitably lead you to starting up again, especially after you don't receive V-Day flowers from an "unexpected" source.) Pity, your jumping the shark like that! So close, too.

Your one chance at possible redemption would be if you could quickly sell Jesse on embracing something else trendy and amusing for the rest of us. For instance, get him to start shaving his arm and leg hair and also start wearing "skinny jeans" by the end of the week, and you'll have my vote. Get him to start texting like a teenage girl also, and OMGLOLHI2U, all of my support is yours.

Miss Flip Cup, dear, to begin I must vocalize my disappointment with your nickname. You haven't played a single season of league kickball, an organized sport specifically revolving around the very game from which your nickname is derived, so your nickname is honorary at best. Until you take a crack at the big leagues, I don't know if I can truly recognize your title.

That aside, you do present some salient points in your debate; however, perfection is unattained, as I do find some flaws in them, and you're fighting a lost cause anyhow. At this point, you're basically a pesky waitress trying to get in between the destined love of our Edward (Jesse) and his Bella (Kimberly, prisoner #181879.) I mean, really, why bother? I'm sure he sees right through you.

As for your points, firstly, any relatively sane girl would appreciate receiving unexpected V-Day flowers and a crappy poem, and some flower guy out there somewhere would get the enjoyment out of transcribing said crappy poem, regardless of the recipient. As for turning the vase into a St. Paddy's Flip Cup Trophy, that raises the problem that flip cup is a team game, so how would you go about awarding it to an individual? And even if you came up with a plausible way, I might feel slightly guilty taking away your trophy but a month after you received it. But that brings us to the next point...

... for years now, I've had a job where I sit in an office in front of a computer I barely know how to work and next to a telephone with entirely too many buttons on it to be a telephone. This job is NEW to you. I think I deserve the V-Day flowers more than you for this reason. Nobody ever sends me flowers, ya know? I'd even like to get some that come in a box and tell me I'm a train wreck and that no one wants to see me naked.

I mean, Jesse's rules just say to nominate someone to get flowers. He doesn't specifically say it has to be a girl. Who knows, maybe Theodore the inmate would like to know someone out there is thinking of him...

But I digress. As for your last point, you had Valentine's Day with Jesse last year, but should that set precedence for this year? Let's review last year's Valentine's Day story. Number of comments on it: two. Number of future comments on the story of Jesse corresponding with an inmate from a prison dating web site: ONE MILLION.

Jesse interacting with a female inmate from a prison dating web site would send this blog into a WHOLE NEW WORLD -- a world where the impossible would meet the possible. It would be a world of the Possimpible.

And finally, Jesse, my liege, I've already voiced my serf-like opinion on this matter; however, I'd like to make one more suggestion for our inmate plan (and this plan truly is ours, people -- it's for the good of us all!) You should try to sneak a carton of Lucky Strikes in with the bouquet. She'll totally appreciate it. If there's one thing I've learned watching late night Cinemax movies set in womens' prisons, it's that Lucky Strikes are basically MONEY in there. That, and womens' prison showers are HOT.

I know that I'm new here, as far as postings go, but since our acquaintance goes way back, I feel qualified to vote. You should definitely send the v-day flowers to Bailey. It's absolutely genius, since you skipped out on getting her number, and there's no face-to-face rejection to worry about. Just don't forget to put some contact info on the card. I swear, you can't go wrong here.

Happy birthday, by the way. And in case you're wondering, I found your blog via Mikele. I should admit that I've been stalking your blog for some time now. I find it quite hilarious and entertaining.

First of all, thanks for stopping by. I'm glad to hear you've found something here amusing.

Second, thanks for the birthday wishes. Mikele and I share that day, only one year apart.

Third, I was thinking the exact same thing. After we walked out my sister even said, "I nominate her".

I was considering an entire blog post about this, but I'll sum this up with a few small thoughts:

A) Did you know that waitresses sometimes take their wedding/engagement rings off to get better tips?

B) Do you know how easy it is to find someone named Bailey on myspace/facebook? I mean... hypothetically speaking, if you were considering sending her flowers because you were having some blog contest, and wanted to see if she was married or whatever first.

Hypothetically, in that situation, it'd be pretty easy to find her. I'd assume.

After you commented on my blog (The Black Valentine's Day Manifesto) about how you did this every year for Valentine's Day, I had to come and see for myself. Obviously I've missed the boat, what with it now being just about March, but I absolutely love the idea.

And I also love your blog, incidentally - I spent the better part of the afternoon reading it from the beginning, as you so kindly did with mine, and I enjoyed it a lot. I also did Latin at university a few years back and am nerdy enough to remember quite a lot of it, so the name 'sesquipedalis'? - love it sick. :)